From “Terry Teachout”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/ via “Crooked Timber”:http://www.crookedtimber.com/, an irresistible quiz of sorts: the “Teachout Cultural Concurrence Index”:http://www.artsjournal.com/aboutlastnight/archives20040704.shtml#82118. If you had to choose, which would it be:
(to save space I’ve deleted the ones where I had no preference and/or no clue)
2. The Great Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises? _Sun_
3. Count Basie or Duke Ellington? _Ellington. easy._
4. Cats or dogs? _cats. even easier._
5. Matisse or Picasso? _Picasso_
6. Yeats or Eliot? _close. Eliot._
7. Buster Keaton or Charlie Chaplin? _Chaplin_
8. Flannery OConnor or John Updike? _O’Connor_
9. To Have and Have Not or Casablanca? _Casablanca_
11. The Who or the Stones? _Stones_
12. Philip Larkin or Sylvia Plath? _Larkin_
13. Trollope or Dickens? _don’t care. Dickens._
14. Billie Holiday or Ella Fitzgerald? _Ella. duh!_
15. Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy? _this is a good one, in that the answer seems more likely to tell you something about somebody. clearly, Dostoyevsky._
16. The Moviegoer or The End of the Affair? _Moviegoer_
18. Hot dogs or hamburgers? _hamburgers, but brats go above either._
19. Letterman or Leno? _Letterman_
20. Wilco or Cat Power? _Wilco_
21. Verdi or Wagner? _Wagner_
22. Grace Kelly or Marilyn Monroe? _Marilyn_
23. Bill Monroe or Johnny Cash? _Johnny_
25. Robert Mitchum or Marlon Brando? _Brando_
29. Red wine or white? _red, clearly_
30. Noël Coward or Oscar Wilde? _Wilde by a mile_
31. Grosse Pointe Blank or High Fidelity? _High Fidelity_
36. Comedy or tragedy? _looking at it, I decided ‘comedy’ in my head, but then actually typed ‘tragedy’. you decide what that means._
37. Fall or spring? _fall_
39. The Sopranos or The Simpsons? _aaiiiee! no fair! apples and oranges! but must pick, so: Simpsons._
41. Joseph Conrad or Henry James? _Conrad_
42. Sunset or sunrise? _sunset_
44. Mac or PC? _PC_
45. New York or Los Angeles? _New York_
48. Van Gogh or Gauguin? _Van Gogh_
49. Steely Dan or Elvis Costello? _oh please. Costello._
50. Reading a blog or reading a magazine? _in theory: equal. in practice: blogs._
51. John Gielgud or Laurence Olivier? _Olivier_
53. Chinatown or Bonnie and Clyde? _Chinatown! don’t insult me!_
54. Ghost World or Election? _ooo! toughie. Election by a hair._
56. Daffy Duck or Bugs Bunny? _Daffy all the way_
57. Modernism or postmodernism? _they’re indistinguishable when you get up close._
58. Batman or Spider-Man? _Spidey_
60. Johnson or Boswell? _Johnson_
61. Jane Austen or Virginia Woolf? _wow, I get to dis James and Austen in one quiz?! too cool. Woolf._
66. Blue or green? _green_
67. A Midsummer Nights Dream or As You Like It? _”I have had a most rare vision. I have had a dream, past the wit of man to say what dream it was.”_
68. Ballet or opera? _opera_
69. Film or live theater? _in theory: equal. in practice: film._
70. Acoustic or electric? _are we talking Royal Albert Hall here, or in general? like it matters. Electric._
71. North by Northwest or Vertigo? _Vertigo_
75. Sushi, yes or no? _you betcha!_
77. Tennessee Williams or Edward Albee? _TW_
78. The Portrait of a Lady or The Wings of the Dove? _hey, I already dissed the guy, don’t make me pick…_
80. Frank Lloyd Wright or Mies van der Rohe? _Wright_
81. Diana Krall or Norah Jones? _Norah. she’s cuter._
82. Watercolor or pastel? _water_
83. Bus or subway? _subway_
85. Crunchy or smooth peanut butter? _extra super teeth-testing crunchy_
86. Willa Cather or Theodore Dreiser? _Dreiser_
87. Schubert or Mozart? _Mozart_
88. The Fifties or the Twenties? _Twenties_
89. Huckleberry Finn or Moby-Dick? _Moby_
90. Thomas Mann or James Joyce? _Joyce_
92. Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman? _that’s odd — seems like this one should have provided another actual_ poet _to compare with Emily…_
93. Abraham Lincoln or Winston Churchill? _who’s gonna dis Lincoln?_
94. Liz Phair or Aimee Mann? _ah, good one. Mann._
95. Italian or French cooking? _Italian_
97. Anchovies, yes or no? _nein, nein!_
98. Short novels or long ones? _in theory: equal. lately: long_
99. Swing or bebop? _swing swing swing_
100. “The Last Judgment” or “The Last Supper”? _Judgment_